Among the Darkness Stirs

“Will you marry Henry?” Frances asked. “I like him.”

“Marry Henry?” Audrey felt a sharp intake as she thought of him. “There’s to be no marriage, Francie. He hasn’t asked me. He has to ask me.”

Frances shrugged. “He will ask you.”

“Will he?” Audrey asked, amused. “How do you know that?”

Frances shifted over to her side. “It’s the way he looks at you.”

“How does he look at me?”

“As if you were the last humbug in a bag,” Frances said simply.

Audrey chuckled. “What? The candy?”

“Yes.”

“What does that mean?” Audrey wondered.

“It’s a hungry look,” Frances said innocently as she yawned and turned away from her.

Audrey watched her sister drift off to sleep and then turned to lie on her side. She looked past the bed and beyond to the large windows that overlooked the green lawns and the river Henry adored so much. She thought of her sister’s words about marriage and knew Henry liked her. Twice he had kissed her, and though the first time had been a mistake, the second at the concert had been real enough.

She liked Henry very much. He was the kind of man a woman would be proud to call her husband. He was intelligent and kind, and the time she spent with him was always enjoyable. But there had been no time to think about such things recently. There had been the death of Marguerite and her friend Alistair and now her mother.

She had hoped Dr. Engle would be able to tell her what was wrong and that her mother could be made whole, but she worried that would not be the case. She stretched, moved out of the bed, and walked the short distance to the windows. The moon hung low in the sky, and the river flowed by peacefully.

She was about to turn away when she saw Henry. He was smoking a pipe on the lawn, looking up at the house. She touched the windowpane in a gesture to him, and he raised a hand to her in return. When she settled back into bed, she felt a sense of peace. Henry was here, and he was watching over them. She felt safe as she fell asleep.

The next afternoon, Audrey pored over the names attached to the initials while the children had their recreation time. She massaged her neck as she read the names for the tenth time and then pushed them aside. This was all nonsense. The initials made no sense and the numbers even less. She could view them for the next twenty years and they would make still less sense.

As she was waiting for the children to return to class, Dr. Beesley entered the room.

“Dr. Beesley,” she said in greeting.

“Ms. Wakefield, the door was unlocked so I let myself in,” he explained coming to stand beside her desk. “I wanted to see how you were faring.”

“I’m well and you are most welcome here. I’m only going over lesson plans and grading,” she explained, waving her hand over the papers that dominated her desk.

“Morbid lesson plans indeed.” He grinned.

She frowned. “Morbid? What’s morbid?”

He shrugged. “Oh. I happened to glance at the writing there.”

“What writing?” she said, looking down at her desk covered with papers.

“That writing there.” He pointed.

“This?” She pulled up the papers, still not understanding. “This is morbid? Why would this be morbid?”

Dr. Beesley grinned. “Well, to each his own, and I’m sure you have your reasons, but if I’m not mistaken, everyone on that list is dead.”

“Dead?” Audrey whispered, her stomach bottoming out.

“That’s why I said morbid. But then I only recognized a few names.”

Audrey tried to recover quickly. “It’s actually some nonsense I was working on. It’s nothing.”